"Take the Next Step" Last year, there was a commercial that ran from "Skechers," the shoe company who has come out with a new line of shoe called the "GOWalk4."It says that it has an all new light weight cushioning system for total comfort, so that you can maximize each step with their new technology.And the phrase for their new footwear was, "Take the next step."If you t...

From the Pastor "The Song of Christmas" Last Sunday, we had around 50 carolers hop the bus here at Chestnut Level, in order to travel and raise our voices in joy as we visited some of our senior adult and homebound church members.We sang Christmas songs of both the silly and the sacred and we had a wonderful time together, and each one that we visited truly appreciated o...

"Seeing God Clearly" Several years ago, I mistook a new member's sister, a beautiful young woman in her late thirties, for the woman's mother.And I later discovered that the man standing next to her was not her father,but her brother.I spoke to these two people at length, saying things like, "You must be so proud." I also said something like, "It is so good to have them...

"The God Who Comes Close" I remember hearing the story told of a woman telling aboutbeing on an airplane flying from Tucson to Phoenix.Also on that plane was a young mom and her baby daughter.And the little baby was saying, "Dada, Dada."She had a little pink bow in her hair, and anytime someone walked by she would say, "Dada, Dada."It turns out Dada was going to be ther...

From The Pastor "The Gourmet God" Is there any more delightful moment than when two people enjoying a lovely candlelit dinner lift their glasses and bring them together in a "clink?"Believe it or not, there are some Bible verses that sound as if we are toasting God.In Revelation 1:5, John writes, "To Him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood."You might w...

From the Pastor Thanksgiving has a long history of celebration in the United States.Starting with the Pilgrims in Plymouth,Massachusettsin 1622, to George Washington declaring a day of Thanksgiving to God for the blessings of becoming a new nation, and finally, having Abraham Lincoln pronounce it as an official national holiday in 1863.I have always treasured this time of...

From The Pastor John Ortberg has a sermon entitled "It All Goes Back in the Box."He talks about playing his grandmother in Monopoly as a boy.Grandma was ruthless.They used to play marathon games that went on for hours.Each was determined to win the battle of wits between two cutthroat Monopoly moguls.As property changed hands, the one with the upper hand would gloat.O...

From the Pastor Not too long ago, I watched the 1993 movie,"Cool Runnings"withsome of the young adults from our church.The movie isabout the first Jamaican bobsled team to go to the Olympics held in Calgary back in 1988.The late John Candy plays Irving Blitzer, a former American gold medalist in the bobsled who agrees to coach the team, and the Jamaicans on the team come...

From The Pastor Last week, when I was in California with my Princeton Seminary Covenant Group, I got to experience how bad the traffic is around Los Angeles.The GPS time for our destination kept going up and up as we weredriving onthe highway, and I was starting to get a bit nervous about making it back to the airport on time to fly home.Thankfully, we found a way around ...

From the Pastor The California pastor, Pastor Erwin McManus, in a sermon titled,Seizing Your Divine Moment, shares the following story about his son Aaron.One summer Aaron went to a youth camp.He was just a little guy and I was kind of glad because it was a church camp.I figured he wasn't going to hear all those ghost stories, because ghost stories can really cause a kid ...